Crazy Heart – Blu-ray Disc Review
April 21, 2010 – 11:07 pm - Posted by: Justin SlussTags: Anna Felix, Beth Grant, Colin Farrell, David Manzanares, Debrianna Mansini, Digital Copy, FOX, Jack Nation, James Keane, Jeff Bridges, Jerry Handy, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Paul Herman, Rick Dial, Ryan Bingham, Ryil Adamson, Scott Cooper, Thomas Cobb, Tom Bower
has an average rating of 7.5 on IMDb
1080p in AVC MPEG-4 on a 50gb disc
DTS-HD 5.1 Master Audio
short but worthwhile + Digital Copy
– 
– 2009
– 111 minutes
– FOX
– 
This uses 29.1GB for the movie out of 33.3GB total.
Overall Verdict – Highly Recommended
Buy it for $24.99 @ Amazon.com
— Review written by: Justin Sluss —
The Movie Itself was based on the novel by Thomas Cobb. The screenplay was adapted by Scott Cooper who also directed the film. Cooper is a native of the town of Bristol, Tennessee which just-so-happens to be the birthplace of Country Music. The film stars Jeff Bridges in a performance that won him the “Oscar” (Academy Award) for Best Actor this year as “Bad Blake“, a 57 year-old Country recording star in a very rough point if not the ending point of his career. Blake is also struggling with an alcohol addiction. His agent has him playing bowling allies, and insists that he work on material (write songs) for another recording artist who is much younger by the name of “Tommy Sweet” (played by Colin Farrell) who used to play in his band.
Things change up a bit when Blake arrives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and the local venue owner asks a favor of him. The venue owner asks if his niece can get an interview with him, to which Blake kindly agrees. This says a lot about the character, much like him earlier actually remembering to play a song which he promised to dedicate to a liquor store owner and his wife as a thank you for the free bottle of booze. He still manages to stick to his word and return the favor; even if he rushes offstage immediately to go vomit (likely from the whole bottle of free booze he had drank before the show). Before Blake is ever interviewed, you get this feeling from his introduction in the beginning of the film that he’s clearly struggling to keep it together; yet he isn’t that bad of a guy, and remains friendly (to a degree) as well as, as I mentioned, a man of his word.
The niece of the local venue owner, a female newspaper reporter, comes to interview Blake and finds him half clothed, and likely a bit drunk. The girl is named “Jean Craddock“, and is played by the lovely Maggie Gyllenhaal. Jean and Blake strike it off pretty well and long story short, despite their age difference and her having a 4-year-old song, the two end up becoming romantically involved. Blake, reassessing the way he is leading his life, makes some changes, and that really makes for the plot of the film for the last hour or so which is downright moving. I won’t go in to much detail as to avoid any spoilers. I will, however, mention that a great co-starring performance is also given by Robert Duvall who was involved in producing the film as well.
“Crazy Heart” is certainly a great film, and totally has an amazing performance from Bridges, as you will see he definitely deserved winning the “Oscar” for this. The film is simply not-to-be-missed — even if you aren’t a fan of Country music as it’s not really as much about the music as it is about the man that made the music. In ways, I compare this film and its story very much to “The Wrestler” from 2008, which won Mickey Rourke an “Oscar” nomination as well that year for best actor. I’d also like to end with a personal note here. I think that the director, producer and adapter of the screenplay Scott Cooper did an amazing job here, and I’m not just saying that because we were both born in the same town and live only 15 minutes apart; he really is an impressive director that is to certainly be watched in the future.
Video Quality on this release is in full 1080p using the AVC MPEG-4 codec on a BD-50 (50 gigabyte dual-layered Blu-ray Disc) in the 2.35:1 aspect ratio. According to IMDb‘s technical specifications for the aspect ratio this was shot on Super 35mm film which makes for a very nice transition from film to Hi-Def. First thing I noticed was that this has a very, very solid black level, a vibrant color palette (at some times more than others), and holds accurate fleshtones. There’s only a very minimal amount of noise or film grain visible here, except for a few dimly lit scenes, like 20 minutes on with Blake being interviewed in his hotel room, which is quite dark. There is a large amount of detail in the Hi-Def presentation; especially in close-up shots or live performances, and also some really great landscape shots here as “Bad Blake” is driving across the country or fishing on the lake. The scenery itself in these shots look great in Hi-Def, and that is much thanks to the cinematography of DP (Director of Photography) Barry Markowitz, as it’s great to see his work being done justice here in Hi-Def. In closing, this looks great, and is very worthy of an impressive “4.5 Star Rating” for overall video quality.
Audio Quality on this release is presented in DTS-HD 5.1 Master Audio. There is a good amount of rear channel presence used for the opening music to the film (one of the main character’s songs). Dialogue is mixed perfectly and delivered primarily through the front center channel speaker. Ten minutes or so in, you’ll get the first performance by “Bad Blake” which makes excellent use of the lossless 5.1 mix, and sounds great as well; also from the performance, you get a really nice amount of bass (LFE) presence here for the kick drum and bass guitar to stand out in the band. The Academy Award-winning original music done by Stephen Bruton and T-Bone Burnett sounds absolutely wonderful here and is done justice. Speaking of which, since this is after all a film that is about a musician, I’m very happy to report that it holds a great sound mix that is very impressive, enough to earn it a “4.5 Star Rating” for overall audio quality.
Bonus materials are presented in High Definition (HD) and Standard Definition (SD) video quality, with Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo @192kbps sound — unless otherwise noted below.
- “Deleted Scenes and Alternate Music Cuts” (28:22 – HD)
- Featurette: Jeff Bridges, Maggie Gyllenhaal and Robert Duvall on What Brought Them to “Crazy Heart” (3:02 – HD) is a short interview with the three primary cast members. This proves to be worth the watch but as I said, it’s rather short and abrubt.
- Theatrical Trailer (1:55 – HD) is presented in Dolby Digital 5.1 @640kbps sound.
- Digital Copy of the film is included which is compatible with both PC and Mac, Windows Media and iTunes portable devices. This is included on a 2nd disc which is a DVD-ROM.
Overall, the bonus materials are worthwhile if you enjoyed the film but they are very short to be honest. The almost 30 minutes of deleted scenes are all worth watching, the featurette (3 minute interview) with the primary cast members is nice and you also get the trailer as well as a Digital Copy of the film compatible with both iTunes & Windows Media (Mac & PC).
Blu-ray Disc packaging:
Screenshots:
NOTE: The full-sized 1920×1080 files are in a .PNG file format and uncompressed. Bare with the slow loading times, keep in mind these files are at least 1MB (1 megabyte) in size each.
You must be logged in to post a comment.